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IV. REVIEWS and NOTES 11 Review of Leonid Grinin and Andrey Ko IV. REVIEWS AND NOTES 11 Review of Leonid Grinin and Andrey Ko- rotayev's ‘Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective’, Springer International Publishing, 2015 Anthony Harper Abstract The book ‘Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective’ represents an insightful analysis of the processes associated with historical change, specifically those processes that have given rise to the current state of the world system. Uniquely, the authors suggest that continuity of the process extends to both the Divergence and Convergence. Further, they suggest that the time depth of the origin of this process is much deeper than the traditional marker of the mid-17th century and build a strong case for this assessment. Fi- nally, Grinin and Korotayev make some predictions regarding the further ef- fects of the process of convergence into the near future, predictions suggesting a significant reshuffling of world system organization and the rise of a global middle class. Keywords: economic growth, convergence, globalization. In the early years of the 21st century humanity faces both promise and also a precarious set of conditions, conditions which span the range of domains from environmental degradation, through socio-political upheaval, to economic downturn. Our sense of promise comes from the diversity of humanity current- ly present on the Earth, the creativity and ingenuity endemic in that diversity, and the potential quality of life that has already been achieved for 60 % or so of the global population, a quality of life that may be a real possibility for many more. This current status of the world system, of course, has a history and, as just mentioned, a double-edged potential for the future as well as a complex presence. Our present level of complexity, perhaps even hyper-complexity, depends on a mix of ingenuity, the availability of historically unique sources of energy, and a level of technological expertise and interconnectedness that is both with- Kondratieff Waves: Cycles, Crises, and Forecasts 2016 210–217 210 Anthony Harper 211 out precedence and ultimately quite fragile. Inspecting this complexity more closely reveals however a trichotomy of existence. Unquestionably, there are at present those states that are hegemonic dominants, the U.S. and Western Eu- rope, and linked to this group, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand. Then below this group are those countries with increasing hegemonic influence, specifically the BRICS states of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, a group that constitutes two demographic giants, China and India, and has the lion's share of the Earth's natural resources, and finally there is the remainder of the planet's 196 states, many in Africa and Southeast Asia, some on the rise, but the majori- ty of this group still economically, politically, and socially vulnerable. Interest- ingly, the pattern of change that has brought the world system to its current state has been occurring for some time and has involved significant changes in the influence of groups of polities over the past thousand or so years, the most significant of which is the rise to dominance of the West over the last 200 years and the current resurgence of the East. All of this poses a number of important questions for historians, econo- mists, demographers, macro-sociologists, and interested scholars in general. How did we come to be in this current set of circumstances? What roles did, do, and will trends in economics, socio-political processes, demographic growth, technology, and culture play in creating the circumstances that were, are, and will be the states of the world system? What were the limits to the world- system as it evolved to its present state? What are the current limits on the sys- tem, and what limits will canalize its future trajectory? Over time was the de- veloping state of the world system a consequence of processual continuity, or are there disjunctions within the time course of the development of the world system? If there are disjunctions or at least periods of rapid change in the tra- jectory of the world system, what is the nature of these periods of heightened change? How similar are they to the phase changes of the physical world, and what is the level of predictability that can be brought to bear on our understand- ing of their significance to the world system? And, clearly there are many more questions that could be specified. Bringing academic focus to the development of the world system, the im- print of the depth of time on that development, the complexity of events occur- ring over that depth of time, the current status of the system, and its future po- tential trajectories requires skill, insight, intelligence, and creativity. To this end, Leonid Grinin and Andrey Korotayev have written a remarkable book Great Divergence and Great Convergence: A Global Perspective, and repre- sent an authorship team which is exceptionally well adapted to the task. Leonid Grinin is the author of over three hundred papers, well over twenty mono- graphs, is the Director of the Volgograd Center for Social Research, is the Dep- 212 Review of ‘Great Divergence and Great Convergence’ uty Director of the Eurasian Center for Big History and System Forecasting, and has a breadth of experience in macrosocial and historical research, all of which make him very well equipped to the task of analysis of the world system changes over the last millennium. Andrey Korotayev also has a varied back- ground with multiple interests ranging from social anthropology to macrosocial dynamics, to the spectral analysis of Kondratieff waves. He is the Head of the Laboratory of Monitoring of the Risks of Sociopolitical Destabilization, he is also a Senior Research Professor with both the Center for Big History and Sys- tem Forecasting and the Institute for African Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, for me what sets him apart is his mastery of math mod- eling of macrosocial processes, a topic that will be dealt with in more detail later. Grinin and Korotayev take the position that the roots of the Great Diver- gence are much deeper than the middle of the 18th century and mark that begin- ning of the process toward divergence with a period of precondition initiated in the 12th and 13th centuries when there was a clear medieval Industrial Revolu- tion, reduced in scale from the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, and this revolution moved the West into a mode of convergence with the at the time far superior East. This process took over two centuries and involved impro- vements in technology and science which had the effect of elevating the envi- ronmental carrying capacity of the West. What followed then was a three phase transition in which the final phase is comparable to the traditional description of the Industrial Revolution and the motive force for the Great Divergence of the West over the East. The initial phase of this process began in the Early Modern period extending from about 1450 CE to the1660s and was character- ized by significant epidemic impact, socio-political destabilization, and the sec- ond phase from the 1600s to approximately 1760 CE, which is characterized by agrarian innovation and proto-globalization. In their discussion of the influence of the Early Modern Period on the Great Divergence Grinin and Korotayev recognize the multifaceted processes of this time and coin the term catching up divergence to very accurately de- scribe specific changes within this mosaic of processes that led to Western con- vergence with the East. The implication of this term is that, while the West in the totality of comparison with the East was clearly behind, the actual con- vergence of the West with the East was brought about by the evolved superior- rity of the West in specific areas which brought about the ultimate and com- plete divergence. Examples of these changed or evolved areas are improved techniques in metal cutting, improvements in water wheel technology, and sig- nificant changes in military technology to name just three. These improvements all fall within the context of improved efficiency of labor, and there were also Anthony Harper 213 improvements in the efficient use of ‘biological energy’, explicitly ‘in industry, in commerce, in accounting, and in other areas’. The authors make the point by asking how many hours of human labor were saved by the invention of the printing press. In these specific areas of divergence then, the convergence of the West with the East was brought about. One further point toward the end of this Early Modern Period is the rapid increase in wealth of the West due to the acquisition of precious metals from the New World, which both increased the flow of goods from the East and also helped develop an incipient middle class in the West. The period from 1600 CE to 1760 CE was uniquely characterized by in particular three factors, the role of the periphery in the West versus the non-role of the periphery in the East, the adoption of an isolationist policy by the East, particularly China and Japan, and an increased rate of both western invention and innovation and the diffusion of those inventions and innovations in the West. Along with these changes, the further increase in agricultural technology released rural workers who could then increase the ranks of the urbanized. It is interesting that while this process had begun in the Early Modern Period, it also fueled invention and innovation by increasing the number of small urbanized areas, a process in which localized invention could then spread through the connectedness of this web of partially autonomous urban areas. This pattern is reminiscent of the structure of a meta-population of organisms and how muta- tion originating in one local population might spread through the remainder of the population via gene flow.
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